Amok Time

Two times seven years ago I was at the Flamenco Hotel in Zamalek - the Island capital of Cairo. Something has called me back here and once again I am sitting in the same cafe' discussing another water project. Maybe time is a circle or has it simply reversed direction? I had been here before - was it in the past or the future? Are these flashbacks or premonitions?

On the way into town the new buildings cover the desert for as far as one can see. It is said now that the greater Cairo area holds 25 million people – but doesn’t hold them tight enough to keep them from driving in all directions at high speed. In Maadi the streets are full of cars.

The dentist remembered me and I marvelled as new German technology replaced a failed 25 year old silver filling with a precision cut crown indistinguishable from a natural tooth – painlessly in less than an hour. This must be the future.

And then there were the newborn babies of merchants on Road 9 – or who were once babies – now grown to children and attending school.

And I am back on the street where I lived – in the building where I lived – but on a higher level somehow. And it is both past and future and connections both gone and begin again.

(Above - a new pipe connection prepares to go under the metro line)

(above: The view from the sixth floor over south Maadi)

But than I am back at the Flamenco Hotel again – where I began this Egypt adventure almost 15 years ago - talking with people about water projects. And it is the past all over again and nothing has changed. Time run amok . . . then as now . . . .